Science

Russia will start work on its own Mars mission given that the European Space Agency (ESA) has suspended a joint project in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, Interfax news agency quoted a top official as saying on Friday. The ESA announced on Thursday that it would be impossible to continue cooperating with Russia on

NASA’s massive new rocket began its first journey to a launchpad on Thursday ahead of a battery of tests that will clear it to blast off to the Moon this summer. It left the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building around 5:47pm ET (21:47 GMT) and began an 11-hour journey on a crawler-transporter to the

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space tourism service has postponed until March 29 a flight initially set for next week, while Saturday Night Live comic Pete Davidson will not be a passenger on the launch, the company said on Thursday. The company, in a brief notice first posted on Twitter, gave no immediate explanation for the

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been aligned to produce the first unified image of a single star, reaching a critical milestone in its journey to unravel the mysteries of the world far beyond our reach. Most traditional telescopes have a single primary mirror that collects light from distant stars. But Webb has 18 hexagonal

NASA’s next-generation moon rocket was due on Thursday to make a highly anticipated, slow-motion journey from an assembly plant to its launch pad in Florida for a final round of tests in the coming weeks that will determine how soon the spacecraft can fly. Rollout of the towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with its Orion

Eugene Parker, a pioneering American astrophysicist whose mathematical prediction that charged particles streamed from stars in a solar wind was met with disbelief before he was ultimately vindicated, has died aged 94, NASA said on Wednesday. Parker was hailed as a visionary who laid the groundwork for the field of heliophysics, the science of understanding the

North Korea’s latest launches appear aimed at developing and testing technology that can be used both for spy satellites and in a massive intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of launching multiple nuclear warheads, analysts said. North Korea deployed a new ICBM system in February 27 and March 5 test-firings, the US and South Korean officials

A Los Angeles-area startup founded by a veteran spaceflight robotics engineer unveiled on Thursday its full-scale, working prototype for a next-generation lunar rover that is just as fast as NASA’s old “moon buggy” but is designed to do much more. The company, Venturi Astrolab, released photos and video showing its Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX)

A team of physicists may have solved the mystery surrounding the matter that is swallowed by black holes. These physicists considered wormholes — theoretical tunnels with two ends at separate points in spacetime — to explain the long-held mystery. Black holes are regions in space through which no matter can pass. The gravity of a

An asteroid, around 3-metre wide, hit the Earth’s atmosphere on March 11, just two hours before it was discovered by a Hungarian astronomer. The object, now designated 2022 EB5, impacted the planet north of Iceland. The 2022 EB5 was only the fifth asteroid to be discovered before it struck the planet. The first four were

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Sunday the US electric carmaker and his rocket company SpaceX are facing significant inflationary pressure in raw materials and logistics. Musk in a tweet also asked about inflation rate outlook and said his companies “are not alone”, retweeting an article saying the Ukraine–Russia conflict sent commodity prices

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has captured an explosion occurring at the Cartwheel galaxy. The supernova, dubbed as SN2021afdx, has been identified as a Type II supernova. This type of supernova is formed when a large star runs out of the fuel that is required to keep the star from collapsing under its own gravity.

NASA has insisted tensions linked to the war in Ukraine had no impact on International Space Station operations or the planned return of an American astronaut aboard a Russian capsule later this month. Mark Vande Hei is due to fly to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov

NASA is set to roll out its Space Launch System (SLS), which will take humans to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, into the public view for the first time on Thursday. The system has been under development for over a decade and is beset by delays and mounting costs. However, the agency hopes once it

After a moderate solar flare shot out of the Sun’s atmosphere several days ago, Earth could be slammed by a series of small geomagnetic storms today (March 15). The US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Met Office predicted that the astronomical phenomenon will have an impact on Earth over the next

An Indian-American astronaut and one of his colleagues have conducted a spacewalk to work on the International Space Station (ISS), whose services have been extended till 2030. Raja Chari, the commander of the SpaceX crew currently docked at the ISS, and flight engineer Kayla Barron walked out of the safety of the space station’s airlock

A 1 km-long asteroid is set to zip past Earth next week. But there is no need to worry. The flyby will have a very safe clearance of 1.93 million km from Earth, meaning it would be more than 5.15 times farther away from us than the Moon. Scientists and astronomers keep a regular watch

China’s Chang’e 5 lunar lander has found the first-ever on-site evidence of water on the surface of the moon, lending new evidence to the dryness of the satellite. The study published on Saturday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances revealed that the lunar soil at the landing site contains less than 120 parts-per-million (ppm) water or

NASA’s new space telescope opened its huge, gold-plated, flower-shaped mirror Saturday, the final step in the observatory’s dramatic unfurling. The last portion of the 21-foot (6.5-meter) mirror swung into place at flight controllers’ command, completing the unfolding of the James Webb Space Telescope. #NASAWebb is fully deployed! ???? With the successful deployment & latching of

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance is in the process of collecting rock samples to send back to Earth  via a future human mission to Mars. But some pebble-sized debris is creating problems for the machine. At first, things went smoothly. Perseverance successfully extracted a sample from a Martian rock, named Issole. However, while transferring the sample